Grand chateaux worth a day trip from Paris

Last summer, I felt like a king while exploring the splendid chateaux near Paris. One of the highlights was climbing under centuries-old exposed timbers through the attic of Vaux-le-Vicomte before popping out on the rooftop to a view of the spectacular garden.

An hour outside of Paris, Vaux-le-Vicomte is one of several sumptuous palaces studding the region around the city. The most famous of these is Versailles. But several other chateaux also make for worthy day trips from Paris, including Vaux-le-Vicomte, Fontainebleau, and Chantilly.

Most of these chateaux were lavish hunting lodges - getaways from the big city. Insanely extravagant, they were primarily built by kings or bankers and financiers from the courts of the kings. These 17th-century equivalents of hedge-fund managers controlled the workings of the economy and amassed almost unfathomable wealth - which they spent in style.

Versailles is the grandest of these chateaux. Built in the town of Versailles, 30 minutes southwest of Paris, it became the residence of the king and the seat of France's government for a hundred years. Louis XIV moved to Versailles from the royal residence in Paris (today's Louvre).

The palace houses Louis' bedroom, a dazzling 700-seat royal opera house, a magnificent throne room with a 3.5-metre canopied throne, and a royal make-out room in which couples would cavort beneath a ceiling painting of Venus, the goddess of love. In the magnificent 80-metre-long Hall of Mirrors, 17 arched mirrors match the 17 floor-to-ceiling windows providing views to the royal garden. Later, this was the room in which the Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending the First World War.

Behind the palace, a landscaped wonderland dotted with statues and fountains was Louis's pride and joy. He loved his gardens and threw his biggest parties here. At the far end of the gardens - a good 40-minute walk from the palace - the pastoral Trianon/Domaine area features a fantasy world of palaces and pleasure gardens, providing Louis and his successors with an escape from their escape.

Versailles may be the most historically significant, but Vaux-le-Vicomte, just an hour away by car, is flat-out ravishing, with a harmony of architecture, interior decor, and garden design that's unrivalled. It gets my vote for the most beautiful chateau in all of France.

Vaux-le-Vicomte was the home of Nicolas Fouquet, France's finance minister during the reign of Louis XIV. After attending Fouquet's chateau-warming party in 1661, a very young Louis XIV was impressed yet envious. So, Louis had Fouquet thrown in prison, hired his architect, artist and landscape designer, and had them build Versailles. The atmosphere of the party is recreated on Saturday evenings in summer, when thousands of candles illuminate the palace while classical music plays in the background.

Compared to Versailles, Vaux-le-Vicomte feels more intimate and in some ways more impressive. Driving up to it, you roll down a peaceful road lined with plane trees, planted by Napoleon so that his armies would have good shade to march under on their long treks across Europe. Vaux-le-Vicomte's sculpted French garden was cutting edge for its time and later would be copied in palaces all over Europe. And the palace is better-furnished than Versailles, despite the fact that most of the paintings and furniture are not original (Louis confiscated what he liked for his own pad).

While Vaux-le-Vicomte and Versailles are French-designed, the Chateau of Fontainebleau, about an hour outside of Paris, was created by Italians. But it lacks Versailles' unity. Originally built in 1528, Fontainebleau features a gangly and confusing series of wings that has grown with centuries of kings. Walking its halls, you can easily track the artistic shift in style, from Renaissance to ornate rococo to the more sober, post-revolutionary neoclassical.

As exhibited in its Napoleon I Museum, Fontainebleau has numerous connections to the French emperor. It was here that the pope met Napoleon before the general's 1804 coronation. And it was from the chateau's famous horseshoe-shaped staircase that Napoleon gave his stirring abdication speech, trading his rule of France for exile to Elba in 1814.

About 30 minutes north of Paris, the extravagant hunting palace of Chantilly floats serenely on a reflecting pond. Though it doesn't have the well-preserved and grandiose interiors of other chateaux, Chantilly is notable for its impressive art.

Because of the social upheaval in France during the Revolution of 1848, the chateau's owner, Prince de Conde, fled to England. Twenty years later, when blue blood was safe again in France, he returned to Chantilly with a fabulous art collection featuring 800 paintings, including works by Raphael, Titian and Delacroix. His book collection, consisting of 13,000 titles, fills the chateau's library.

Whether your interest is art, gardens, or pure, over-the-top opulence, a trip to Paris isn't complete without a dip into the countryside to visit the region's grand chateaux.

Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. E-mail him at rick@rick-steves.com and follow his Facebook blog.

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